Several people have told me they’ve found the solution to classical tagging in digital collections, and then gone on to explain some variation on “use the album field for the work title, use the artist field for the composer and use the composer field for the artist”. A complex version of this scheme is explained in detail here.

At this point in my listening life, I'm roughly 50% rdio, 40% MP3 files, 5% YouTube, and 5% random sounds. This means I'm slowly turning into just a consumer of metadata rather than a metadata maintainer, which in turn means I spend more time tweaking playlists. Arguably, progress...

After yesterday's meh, things are picking up today, musically anyway...

Here's a YouTube of Christopher D. Lewis playing the Philip Glass Concerto for Harpsichord & Orchestra with Nicole Paiement conducting. I think the unusual timbre, for Glass music anyway, is refreshing.

I found the invitation intriguing for several reasons. For one, I have always been an admirer of the literature for harpsichord, had studied some of the music from the Baroque period quite thoroughly, and have played a bit of that music myself. Secondly, I knew that the modern day harpsichord was capable of a fuller, more robust sound than was available in "period" instruments and might make a handsome partner to a modern chamber orchestra.

After listening to the Hunger Games soundtrack, I found my way to Music with Changing Parts. I scoff at people who listen to classical music to relax, but this was a nice transition after Taylor Swift, Arcade Fire, Neko Case, Maroon 5 etc. Well, at least the first half hour. We'll see if I make it to the hour mark...

The late Sonny Sharrock was a fine electric guitarist and Ask the Ages is a great improvisational album.

Wikipedia:

One of few guitarists in the first wave of free jazz in the 1960s, Sharrock was known for his incisive, heavily chorded attack, his highly-amplified bursts of wild feedback, and for his use of saxophone-like lines played loudly on guitar.

Sonny Sharrock - Ask the Ages. Promises Kept. Little Rock. Many Mansions. As We Used to Sing

These are roughly sorted in decreasing order of favoriteness. The David Murray is by far my favorite for the month; the last track -- George Antheil music narrated by the late Vincent Price -- is novel, if not really lovable.

This list is not even necessarily representative of what I listened to this month as my MP3 playlists were mostly John Cage, John Fahey, and Wooden Shjips.

The Philip Glass greatest hits are mostly bombastic and in hindsight, I use John Cage and John Fahey as small-scale antidotes. After I attend all three nights of Einstein on the Beach in Berkeley later this year, I'll need to check into the John Fahey Memorial Rest Home for the Overly Arpeggiated.

Maura Lafferty touches on my blogs' achilles heel; I spend too much time on "polished, shiny, fancy big names than the new talent." This month's playlist does have music by Steve Peters and Rick Cox, but also probably has too much jazz by dead guys and nothing by hot New Yorkers.

The list does have a good dose of African tracks including new Amadou & Mariam as well as choice selections from Rough Guide: Desert Blues.